The first paper today, eventually named “Juifs et polémique anti-juive dans l’Hexahemeron d’Athanase,” offered by Vincent Déroche (Collège de France), discussed the passages where the Jews make an appearance in Athansius’ Hexaemeron. Beyond its use as designation for the literal reading of the scripture, the term ‘Jewish’ is otherwise used polemically, and more specifically for contemporary polemical contexts (rather than a mere topos), apparently assimilated with or rather in conjunction with Arab Muslims, for instance in expressions such as ‘the synagogues of the Jews and of the Barbars’, Ἰουδαίων τε καὶ βαρβάρων συναγωγάς.

In the second paper—“Rôle et usage de l’Écriture dans les Récits d’Anastase le Sinaïte”—Andre Binggeli (IRHT, Paris) described the use of the scripture in polemical contexts (mostly antimuslim) in relation to the formation of Athanasius’ Récits sur le Sinaï and Récits utiles à l’âme (which AB edited for his PhD completed in 2001).

In the last paper of the symposium—“Rhetorical and Exegetical Appropriations of Scripture in Anastasius’ Unpublished Homilies”—Konstantinos Terzopoulos (Aegis), who is preparing the critical edition of a number of these homilies, discussed the variety of rhetorical devices used by Athanasius, and showed how the sermon was carefully built for performance, which in turn poses questions about the education of the author as well as about his whereabouts.